The Magdalene

R. T. Smith

R. T SMITH

   THE MAGDALENE

This gnarled stone torn
from a wall of Galway's
Magdalene Laundry

could break my table
with stories and the weeping
that seeped into granite.

When "wayward girls"
cast off by kin
worked for the Sisters

of Mercy, escape was
unlikely. Moth-cautious
and lonely, they labored

with a stone of soap
to cleanse every soiled
vestment or smock. Palms

scalded, skin white as leeks
and eyebrows bleached
threadbare, each girl tore her

knuckles on a washboard,
kept her songs secret
and feared the pearl

virgins with their holy
uniforms and keys.
On Forster Street one

could almost hear them sobbing
and imagine the lye,

of local slang- "She's one
of the Maggies, poor soul" -
Anna from Kinvara, Dierdre

from Shule, thin Brigit
from the Maamturk
hills, all the sad

Marys. In calico shifts
they drifted wraith-like
by calor lamp or

candle, hostages
to their bodies, shorn
and weary. When the nuns

knelt at beads, the girls
crept to the kitchen
bucket for scraps, always

wary for the scrape
of a key against iron,
the clack of a keeper's

rosary. When the woman
bathed Jesus's feet
with her hair, he blessed

her, but this fist
of granite under lamplight
attests how a century

of sad ladies ate
the hard bread and ladled
broth behind a dozen

locks, craving only
one stroll by the sea
or a simple lily at mass,

and anyone listening would
yearn to retell
their history for penance,

but tonight is too late
to abbreviate the weeping
or ease the guilt of any

witness, and not even
an artifact grown cold
in that unholy wall can lift

a life of misery
to the song of an angel
windblown as lynched

laundry or trapped
in a scouring stone.